Comcast will offer a range of services including the Extreme 50 tier with download speeds of up to 50 Mbps. Comcast says Extreme 50 can download a 6 GB movie in about 16 minutes. DOCSIS 3.0 uses channel bonding, which enables multiple downstream and upstream channels to be used together by a single subscriber.

“We’ll have the capability to deliver even faster speeds in excess of 160 Mbps,” said Curt Henninger, Senior Vice President of Comcast Oregon and SW Washington. “Today’s announcement reaffirms Comcast’s commitment to offering nearly every customer in the Northwest the ability to enjoy some of the fastest Internet speeds available today.”

The New Residential Tiers are:

Extreme 50, offers up to 50 Mbps of downstream speed and up to 10 Mbps of upstream speed at $139.95/month.

Existing business class customers also will receive complimentary speed increases—speeds on the Starter tier will be doubled to up to 12 Mbps / 2 Mbps and a new Premium Tier also will be introduced, offering speeds up to 22 Mbps / 5 Mbps for $99.95/month.

This morning a Comcast installer came to my apartment in Portland. I asked about DOCSIS 3.0. “What’s that”?, he asked. He’d never heard of it.

Installers get paid by piece-work. A simple cable modem installation (like mine) nets the installer $30. A Triple play install nets $70. My installer, who was a SysAdmin and has Microsoft Certification, had 8 installs scheduled today (Nov 18). At $50 per install, that’s about $400/day. My cable modem install took 20 minutes.

I’ve been waiting for Clearwire to offer service in Portland. I even have a Xohm Express Card (ordered from Baltimore). But I’ve waited a year for Clearwire. I can’t wait anymore.

Digital cable channels typically are allocated above 552 MHz, the upper frequency of cable channel 78. Between 552 and 750 MHz, there is space for 33 6-MHz channels (231–396 SDTV channels). I was told that Comcast will eliminate analog channels next year. Bad news for cheapskates like myself without a converter box or DTV.